


The Sun Doth Move

by t_pock



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Professors, Astronomer Oikawa Tooru, Crush at First Sight, Eventual Smut, Fluff and Humor, Kinesiologist Iwaizumi Hajime, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mentions of Past Alien Abduction, Minor Angst, Oikawa Tooru's Knee Injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2020-05-30 18:22:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19408813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_pock/pseuds/t_pock
Summary: Oikawa Tooru has made a place for himself at a new university after losing his previous professorship due to an unearthly incident that no one else believes. Meeting Iwaizumi Hajime makes him feel like maybe he doesn’t have to be defined by that otherworldly night.All Tooru has to do to keep his new job and crush is not sound like a conspiracy theorist, which is easier said than done when, unlike other astronomers, he’s seen the stars up close…





	1. Doubt Thou The Stars Are Fire

**Author's Note:**

> My siblings got me into Haikyuu!! earlier this year. I'm an astronomer who grew up playing volleyball: becoming a dumbass for Oikawa was cosmically unavoidable. Please enjoy this complete and utter self-indulgence.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meteoric collision.

Tooru pins his briefcase between his knees so he can carefully tuck a bundle of emission tubes under one arm and clench a stack of lab reports between his teeth. With the hand not holding his thermos, he fishes his key ring from his pocket and unlocks the department office door. Hanamaki doesn’t bother looking up from his seat on the floor in front of the faculty mailboxes.

“Thanks for the help,” Tooru sniffs.

“Oikawa-sensei.” Hanamaki continues shelving adjunct observation forms. “You’re late.”

Tooru snaps his wrist up to his face, almost sacrificing the tubes to check his moon-phase watch, before he realizes Hanamaki is being ironic. He has yet to successfully apply scientific skepticism to Hanamaki’s monotone.

“Only eight hours early today,” Hanamaki tsks. “You’re slipping.”

Tooru’s class doesn’t start until the evening, but he’s made a habit of coming in at eight thirty with the rest of the non-teaching staff. He uses the time to hold open office hours, test his in-class demos, take inventory of lab equipment, and put cute alien animations in the corners of his lecture slides.

“I don’t want to hear that from you,” he says. He crosses the lobby to his office, keying it open and nudging the lights with his shoulder. He spits out the reports and places the tubes next to a box of spectroscopes on his desk so he can pour tea from his thermos into styrofoam cups from the office water cooler.

“Beauty routine take too long?” Hanamaki asks, stuffing a registration request into Watari-sensei’s mailbox.

The truth is that Tooru was up until two o’clock reworking the lab activities written into his curriculum by the course coordinator back when the class was first created, updating them for new simulation software. As a consequence he slept through five of his ten morning alarms and had to sprint for the train to the university. 

He and Hanamaki have cultivated a certain back and forth over the last two months of Tooru’s recent employment, however, so he puts a cup of tea down by Hanamaki’s knee and says, “Perfection can’t be rushed.”

Surprise tweaks Hanamaki’s pale eyebrows out of their bored slant. Apparently he hadn’t thought Tooru would notice the way he hides his hands in his waistband on the mornings when the office heater hasn’t turned on yet.

“Too good to drink coffee?” Hanamaki asks, because it would probably strain his undertaxed facial muscles to offer a sincere thanks.

Coffee gives Tooru a migraine. “And ruin these teeth?” he gasps, considering it his win when Hanamaki snorts a little. “Do I have any mail?”

He bounces on his heels in anticipation and stops when it makes his knee throb. Earlier this week he received permission from the department chair and academics officer to start an astronomy club. Irihata-san had seemed taken aback by his quick request but had offered his signature—on the condition that Tooru reword some of the SETI objectives in the club budget request. Tooru had roped Yahaba-sensei into posting flyers and contact forms around campus. He’s hoping there’s been some initial interest.

“Nope,” Hanamaki says. Tooru squints at him, trying to read the quirk of his mouth, until he elaborates, “Yours took a wrong turn. Again.”

“Makki,” Tooru chides. “You said you’d talk to the courier.”

“I did.” Hanamaki rolls to his feet with his tea and goes back to his desk in the middle of the lobby. Not for the first time Tooru wonders what his secretarial qualifications really are. “They’ve edited your department info, but it’ll take a while for the system to update.”

Tooru pinches the bridge of his nose. “The hazards of using tech from the last century.”

“Kids these days,” Hanamaki tuts, unconcerned with Tooru looking over his shoulder as he pulls up solitaire on his monitor.

Tooru returns to his office. He hauls his briefcase onto his desk and sorts his laptop from his ungraded coursework. He also takes out the old posters from his previous office, finally out of storage, and tacks them to the walls, mindful of their well-loved, fuzzy creases: the original film advertisements for _Alien_ and _Contact_ , a star chart illustrated with western constellations, a printout of the Arecibo message, a glossy poster of the Pale Blue Dot, and the picture of the circumstellar disc that earned him his doctorate.

After slapping a back-in-ten note to his door, he grabs his keys and walks out. “I’ll be quick. Do _not_ raid my secret dessert drawer while I’m gone.”

Hanamaki finishes his game in a waterfall of onscreen cards. “Absolutely demolish your secret dessert drawer while you’re gone. Roger.”

Tooru restocked the box of goodies in the drawer yesterday. Last time he checked all the cream candy was gone; he’s currently performing an experiment to determine whether Hanamaki’s weakness is the taffy or cream itself. He’ll get the data in good time.

He stops by Hanamaki’s desk, spinning the Gray bauble on his key ring around his finger. “Any deliveries for life sci?” he asks, watching for a tell.

Hanamaki is very good—if Tooru weren’t analyzing his every muscle tick he might have missed the way the peculiar little points of Hanamaki’s ears turn pink. “I don’t fraternize with the enemy.”

“Understood,” Tooru salutes, propping the office door open and stepping out.

The physical sciences hallway has gotten a little busier since he arrived. There are a few adjunct lecturers yawning inside their little room next to the department office, a physics team unlocking one of the labs to work on their submission for an upcoming competition, and Mizoguchi-san negotiating transfer credits with a harried student outside the chair office. The team greets him shyly as he passes, grateful for his impromptu advice on their last experimental trial and a little flustered at his smile.

The natural sciences hallway is empty except for geology’s two new teaching assistants, Kindaichi and Kunimi, who drew the short end of some stick and are dusting and cataloguing all of the geodes and mineral samples in the display cabinets along the walls. Kindaichi splutters a little when Tooru sing-songs a hello, but Kunimi’s apathetic face doesn’t budge. Tooru intends on cracking that egg before the end of the semester.

The life sciences hallway is a madhouse. Tooru turns the corner and immediately has to dodge a Petri dish, which shatters on the linoleum behind him.

“Bakageyama! Watch where you’re going—!”

It’s the tiny zoologist Tooru met at his orientation. He’s trying and failing to balance a glass case of feathers organized by type and coloration while prying his red hair from the grip of the human manifestation of a hernia.

“Dumbass!” Kageyama shouts back. “That was my most mature sample! Watch where _you’re_ going!”

The only silver lining Tooru could find at first in leaving his last university was also leaving the universe’s two biggest wastes of carbon compounds and complex proteins: Ushijima Wakatoshi and Kageyama Tobio. The cosmos had quickly humbled him—Kageyama had suddenly appeared in front of him at orientation like he’d been beamed down and informed Tooru that he had been invited to join the research team of Ukai-san the younger and _would he please continue to mentor his side work on organic material in cometary cores_? 

That was lucky for him. If Kageyama had said he was also joining Udai Tenma-san’s project on biochemical tracers in protoplanetary toruses, Tooru would have lost this job too—by smacking Kageyama’s tremulous, unpracticed smile right off his face.

“Yahoo! Tobio-chan, Chibi-chan,” Tooru croons. “Trying to get fired so soon?”

“Ack! The Grand King!” With that inscrutable squeak, the tiny zoologist squirms out of Kageyama’s grip and catches up with his senior, the even tinier researcher with hair like a real bird’s nest. “Nishinoya-senpai! Wait for me!”

“Oikawa-senpai,” Kageyama says, a little red. He sets his Petri dish rack on the ground so he can start sweeping up his lost dish. “Good morning. When you have a moment—”

“It is a good morning!” Tooru agrees, stepping over him. “Let’s keep it that way.”

Coming down the hallway is the paleontologist with the bad attitude and the ecologist always at his heels, carrying between them a giant canister of something Tooru knows for sure isn’t used in isotopic analysis. He picks up the pace so he can be back in his office before one of these unsupervised research assistants blows up the hallway.

Inside the lobby of the life sciences department, he leans a hip on Matsukawa’s desk. “Mattsun,” he sighs.

“Hey, E.T.,” Matsukawa replies, standing on his chair to hang plastic DNA helices from the ceiling. Tooru pouts—Hanamaki hasn’t even sent out the memo about their own department party yet.

“You know what I’m here for.” By now Tooru is as familiar a face in this office as Ukai-san the senior, who periodically visits to complain about what his grandson is doing with the department.

Matsukawa hums. “Ask nicely.”

“Stealing mail is a crime,” Tooru points out, picking up the last double helix from the desk and holding it out.

Surprised into a smile, Matsukawa tacks it up with the others. He climbs down from the chair and reaches under his desk for a box with _Oikawa_ labeled on the lid.

Tooru fist pumps when he sees the scribbled contact forms on top of his less interesting mail: a copy of the revised academic calendar, a stack of grade reversal forms, another invitation to speak at the International Astronautical Conference. So far, five students have requested to be put on the newly minted astronomy club’s mailing list. He kisses the papers and whispers, “We’ll get more funding than Ushiwaka’s shitty little rocket club.”

Matsukawa doesn’t question it. “When are you gonna straighten this out?”

“Mission Control said the system will take time to update.” Tooru peeks from under his lashes as he speaks.

“Ah.” Matsukawa palms the back of his neck, so obvious it’s almost laughable. “Well, Mission Control knows best.”

“Usually,” Tooru agrees, “except for how to dress for the office. The phys sci department is an icebox in the mornings.” With that information payload securely delivered, he scoops up his mail and pushes the box back across the desk. “Let me know the instant any more forms come in!”

“Sure thing, E.T.,” Matsukawa says, returning to his box of decorations and unpacking some cute plastic polymers to put on top of the faculty mailboxes. He looks thoughtful; Tooru trusts that he will soon take over his morning tea duties.

“Bye, Mattsun,” he calls over his shoulder on his way out. “And I’ve told you a million times! Call me Major Tom—”

Tooru isn’t looking where he’s going—he hits another professor entering the office while he’s exiting and goes sprawling. On instinct he drops his mail to cup his bad knee on the way down, and mostly softens his fall with his face.

“Ow,” he says into the linoleum.

Strong hands pull him up from his sprawl to a seat. “Shit, I’m sorry.” The other professor crouches over Tooru. “You okay, Major Tom?”

Tooru didn’t meet this professor at orientation—he’s _certain_ he would have remembered the thick arms bracing him upright. “I am now.”

That lifts one side of the other professor’s stern mouth. “Your leg—” His keen eyes drop down Tooru’s body, drawn with almost preternatural awareness to his knee.

“Old injury,” Tooru says, light and quick, and as a distraction adds, “From when I fell from heaven.”

“Did you just use a line on yourself?” The professor’s voice is husky and incredulous.

Tooru shrugs. “Saved you some time.”

The professor scoffs. “Thanks.” He rolls his eyes, but he’s still grinning. He pulls Tooru the rest of the way to his feet and puts Tooru’s hand in his. “Sorry about that. Iwaizumi Hajime.”

Tooru, big and fit since high school, has never been manhandled before. He beams. “Oikawa Tooru.”

“I’m new—I came here with the big turnover in biology,” Iwaizumi explains. “I teach anatomy.”

Tooru eyes him. “What a fine anatomical specimen.”

Iwaizumi looks torn between a scowl and a laugh. “Do you ever stop?”

“No,” Matsukawa answers from afar.

Tooru feels blood rush to his face. He’d genuinely forgotten they were standing outside the department office. “Mind your own business, Mattsun,” he calls back, reaching down to collect his spilled mail.

His knee immediately twinges. At his wince, Iwaizumi squats down to gather Tooru’s contact forms and pauses. “You’re not life sciences.”

“Nope. Phys sci,” Tooru corrects. “I teach the astrobiology course that the department just revived. Unfortunately, someone made the wrong call between _astro_ and _bio_ when they registered me in the uni mail system.”

“That’s old software for you,” Iwaizumi says. Curiosity softens his natural pout. “But aliens? Pretty rad.”

Tooru can feel himself smiling too hard. “You have good taste, Iwaizumi-sensei.” It’s been less than two minutes and he’s already considering a proposal.

“Back at you,” Iwaizumi says, unexpectedly roguish. Tooru feels like a desert flower drinking long-awaited rain, shivering with the sensation of being flirted with after a long drought. 

Iwaizumi nods over Tooru’s shoulder at Matsukawa pasting decals of protozoans and viruses onto the glass panes of the office windows. “My bio mech forum starts soon and I still need Matsukawa-san to show me around the lecture halls.”

“I won’t keep you,” Tooru says, though he wants to. “Your students are no doubt eagerly awaiting their physical education.” He gives Iwaizumi his best lidded look so he has something to remember the way Tooru will remember Iwaizumi’s strong grip.

Iwaizumi grimaces like he’s eaten something sour. “Do me a favor and never say that again.”

Tooru laughs at his distress. “See you around, Iwaizumi-sensei. Save an anatomy lesson for me.”

“God.” Iwaizumi chuckles despite himself. Tooru is utterly charmed by the way he can smile and frown at the same time. ”I’ll be in your care, Oikawa-sensei.”

“I’ll be in your care,” Tooru echoes, stepping aside so Iwaizumi can enter the office. He glances over his shoulder to watch him go, only to realize he’s been caught—Matsukawa snickers at him through the office window as he puts down the decorations to help Iwaizumi with the forum. Tooru skitters away before the heat in his face escapes through his ears as steam.

Back in the physical sciences department, Hanamaki looks up from his desk with a sticky spot of candy cream in the corner of his mouth.

“You sure took your time,” he says suspiciously. “Doing what?”

Tooru floats through the door. “Meeting my future husband.”

“In _life sci_?” Hanamaki closes out of a clickbait article and stares at Tooru. “Oikawa-sensei, have some self-respect.”

“Makki,” Tooru says seriously, putting his hands down on Hanamaki’s desk. “We’re going to get married on JAXA’s first lunar colony and every day he will benchpress me to keep his bone density up until we eventually die of radiation exposure, after which our bodies will remain side by side on the surface until meteoritic erosion eventually disintegrates our corpses.”

Hanamaki gives him a long blink. “That’s sweet.”

“I know,” Tooru sighs dreamily, and floats the rest of the way to his office.

Inside, he collapses into his chair and stares up at the paper orrery he hung from the ceiling. His knee aches but the rest of him is buzzing like a Cepheid variable, vibrating with giddiness.

It’s been a long time since a colleague has shown interest instead of mockery. He was popular at his last university until the incident. After that the new brace on his leg had drawn more attention to his police statement than his work.

Since he came to this university, things have been nice and mundane. Everyone treats him with the bland cordiality that means they haven’t heard the circumstances of his transfer. A certain life sci professor’s cute frowning laugh makes Tooru hope they never will.

He puts a hand over his bad knee and prays that Iwaizumi doesn’t read MUFON news.

☆

That night Tooru gets home after midnight. His astrobiology class ends long after dark, so he takes the handful of brown-nosers who always linger up to the roof for a gander at Mars to complement his lecture on the Viking landers. As always, he delights in their awe before sending them off, packing up the lab, and retreating to his office to grade. The last train has gone before he remembers the time.

The walk home makes his knee balloon with inflammation. He falls asleep icing it on the couch while drafting a new lab report to the white noise of his favorite, poorly-dubbed version of _The Thing_ half-muted on his tv.

When he wakes up, the pain is bad enough that he tears up while hobbling to the bathroom for his pills. He stuffs his rehab insoles in his shoes and grabs his cane before he leaves for the university, resigning himself to the attention.

Hanamaki does a very subtle double take when Tooru limps into phys sci. “Oikawa-sensei. Just the man I wanted to see.”

“In the flesh,” Tooru confirms, falling a little short of chipper. He perks up when Hanamaki skips disinterestedly over his cane and narrows a look at his face.

“Did you or did you not leak sensitive information from this department?” he accuses.

Tooru notices the steaming coffee cup on Hanamaki’s desk, stenciled with little dinosaurs and clearly from life sci. Privately he marvels at Matsukawa’s quick turnaround.

“That’s above your clearance,” he says smugly as he makes his careful way to his office.

He spends an hour debugging some code for Udai-san before his advisee, a precocious undergrad interested in jovian moons, knocks shyly on his door for their appointment; he coaches them through writing an abstract until they have to run off to class. By the time Hanamaki steps out for lunch, Tooru has put the finishing touches on his afternoon lecture for the planetary physics class he’s co-professoring and concedes to his throbbing knee that it’s time for a break, elevating his leg and icing it with the pack from his lunchbox. 

For the first time all morning he allows himself to daydream about Iwaizumi, sighing at the memory of his steep frown and his boyish smile and his bulging arms. He kicks his good leg childishly with the desire to collide with him again, and nearly jumps out of his seat when a knock on the door interrupts his pouting.

“Come in,” he calls, expecting Hanamaki back with bentos from the university cafeteria. “I’m decent.”

“That’s too bad,” Iwaizumi says as he pushes the door open, a mail packet tucked into his elbow. “Afternoon, Oikawa-sensei.”

Tooru feels elation and embarrassment hit him like a phaser shot. “Iwaizumi-sensei,” he greets, resisting with all his might the urge to fling his ice pack under the desk and hide his swollen knee. “Here to visit little old me?”

“Your mail came in,” Iwaizumi explains. “Since I sacked you on your way into life sci yesterday, I thought I’d drop by and…” His eyes land unerringly on Tooru’s leg even as he speaks, and his natural pout dives into a scowl. He cuts himself off by slapping the packet down on the desk and dropping into a squat in front of Tooru. “Ah, shit.”

Tooru’s heart skips a beat when Iwaizumi gently lifts the ice pack away and probes at his knee with knowing fingers. 

“So I did hurt you,” Iwaizumi grimaces. His touch is as capable as that of Tooru’s physical therapist and much warmer. 

“Hardly. I break down at least once a month,” Tooru says, flippant. Iwaizumi’s guilty look is cute, but Tooru would rather have his smile. He tries not to squirm at the quiet ache of Iwaizumi’s examination or the goosebumps raised in its wake.

“Do you take medication?” Iwaizumi asks, ignoring him. “When’s the last time you had a painkiller?” He grabs Tooru’s jacket from the back of his chair and balls it up to make a pillow under his knee, elevating it higher. “You need a real ice pack on this.”

Tooru is caught between giddiness at Iwaizumi’s bold hands on him and discomfort at the focus on his busted leg. “Did you come here to make mooneyes at me or not?” he asks, ignoring him in return. “Enough playing doctor.”

“Kinesiologist,” Iwaizumi corrects. He finally looks up at Tooru, pinning him with deep green eyes. “That means I usually say when it’s enough. And you’ll know when I make mooneyes at you.”

Tooru has known Iwaizumi for one day but it’s not hard to see that he’s genuinely vexed. He doesn’t see the need for Iwaizumi to be blaming himself when they could be picking up where they left off yesterday, however.

He crosses his arms. “Fine. You may heal me…” Iwaizumi starts to lean closer to his knee, before Tooru swings his bad leg off of his jacket and under the desk, out of sight. “…by having lunch with me.”

For a moment Iwaizumi looks like he’s going to protest. Eventually the corner of his stern mouth rises. “What’s cheap around campus?”

Tooru is glad Iwaizumi’s come around. “Cheap?” he gasps. “Where’s your sense of atmosphere?”

Iwaizumi gestures at the alien posters and hanging solar system in the room. “We got all the atmosphere we need already.”

Tooru tries to hold onto his indignation. Despite his best efforts, he smiles. “There’s a souzaiya behind the med building.”

Iwaizumi holds the door while Tooru retrieves his cane and they leave phys sci side by side, going down the sci halls until they reach the corridor that leads to the medical wing. Tooru is grateful for the way Iwaizumi doesn’t make a big deal about slowing his steps to match his limp; instead he ribs Tooru about the little alien head on his office keys until Tooru notices the Godzilla print on Iwaizumi’s lanyard and returns the mockery.

They’ve managed to agree to disagree about their top five sci-fi movies by the time they make it to med, where they have to sidestep several new attendings complaining sleepily about their interns. 

“Hello, Captain. Hello, Mr. Refreshing,” Tooru greets. “Looking fantastically haggard today.”

“Oikawa-sensei,” Sugawara replies, showing his dimples. “You’re looking wonderfully banged up yourself.”

Sawamura pinches his nose and sighs at both of them, too tired to wrangle them into politeness.

“Kuroo-san. Yaku-san.” Iwaizumi nods at the other attendings.

“Iwaizumi-sensei.” As he talks Kuroo winks at Tooru. Tooru sticks his tongue out in return, a highly sophisticated retort from their acquaintanceship in undergrad when they agreed to share a brain cell in the chem classes they both took for their double majors. “Can’t believe you left us for the sci chumps. Just who are you fraternizing with these days?”

“Oi.” Yaku checks him with a hip and sends him stumbling out of the way.

“I ask myself the same thing,” Iwaizumi says, making Tooru squawk.

“For that, you can buy both of our lunches.” He clacks ahead on his cane with his nose in the air.

Iwaizumi makes their goodbyes and catches up with a little jog. “That was the plan,” he says, and then blushes when noises of intrigue from the attendings follow them out the door the med students use for smoke breaks. Tooru privately commits Iwaizumi’s ruddy, embarrassed face to memory.

To his credit, Iwaizumi doesn’t ask until they’re outside on the sidewalk that connects campus to the trendy side streets to which students flock after class. They’re just ahead of the lunch rush, so they’re alone on the lawns.

“Old injury, huh?” he prompts.

Tooru likes to tell a different story every time someone questions him about his knee, either believable enough to stymie further interest or outrageous enough to make it clear he despises the prying. Once he blamed it on a nasty fall down Mauna Kea during an observation; another time he said it was his fault for trying to ride a unicycle intoxicated.

It’s hard to summon a lie when Iwaizumi is so genuine, however, pouting at Tooru like he can heal him with willpower alone. For the first time, Tooru offers the truth.

“A year ago I was abducted by aliens.”

Saying it aloud feels strangely liberating, not as humiliating as it had felt when the police had squeezed into his hospital room—the one into which he’d been rushed after someone had found him shivering and incoherent in the fields behind his last apartment complex—to take his statement. The officer with the pad had put down his pen and stepped out of the room to say something on his radio while the others gently asked him what happened again.

“I busted my knee when they put me back,” he says. “Tractor beams make for surprisingly bumpy rides.”

A lot of his memories of that night are staticky, but he remembers very well the dizzying rush of sizzling energy and prismatic light, the sudden stomach-lurch of gravity pulling him down to the too-far ground, and the sickening crunch of his leg as it folded under him on impact. He’d been a screaming meteorite hurtling toward Earth, and then nothing but darkness until the headache of the bright hospital lights had pulled him from the void.

“It gives me trouble every now and then,” he adds, shrugging.

Iwaizumi is quiet beside him for a while, long enough that they arrive at the awning of the souzaiya in silence. Tooru sneaks a glance at him and finds him frowning and pensive. He must have taken Tooru’s admission as an obnoxious lie; he’s probably trying to backpedal, to find a way to apologize for the question without offending him further. Tooru isn’t sure what other reaction he thought telling the truth would get.

He startles when Iwaizumi finally says, “Must have been a bad probe if they threw you back like that.”

All Tooru can do is blink for several moments. Then he stomps his good leg hard enough to rattle the sign outside the souzaiya. “I was an excellent probe!” 

“Is that something to brag about?” Iwaizumi asks, entering the shop. Several of the shop’s patrons glance at them. “What do you want?”

“Eggplant with meat sauce…!” Tooru says, still spluttering.

“Anything else?” Iwaizumi rubs his chin as he looks up and down the counter. “I’m thinking hamburger steak and potato salad.”

“Get the tamagoyaki,” Tooru huffs, and then curses himself for getting distracted. The damage is already done, so he mutters, “The okaka onigiri too.”

Iwaizumi relays that to the server behind the counter and turns back to Tooru. “Sounds like they abducted you and then decided you were a shitty research subject.”

“As if you’d make a better subject!” Tooru lifts his chin. “What more could they want? I’ve got brains, brawn, _and_ beauty.”

“Do you?” Iwaizumi asks mildly. He erupts into laughter when Tooru pokes him furiously with his cane. It’s a really good laugh, gruff and warm, and it makes Tooru subside, face threatening to turn pink. He still lets Iwaizumi carry the side dishes back to the science building.

“I confided in you,” Tooru sniffs on the way into his office, “and you’re _mocking_ me.” He’s putting on airs, but deep in his gut a giddiness is boiling with the heat of a stellar core. No one’s ever ribbed him so easily about his knee, and no one’s ever looked so good doing it.

“I would never,” Iwaizumi says, letting Tooru sit down first and then doling out their food and utensils on the desk. “Just looking at both sides.”

“God, a centrist.” Tooru rolls his eyes. “No wonder you enjoyed _Son of Godzilla_.”

“Hey!” Iwaizumi protests. “I don’t have to take that from someone who probably liked _SpaceGodzilla_.” He breaks his chopsticks with too much force and they end up unusably lopsided.

Tooru laughs at him even as he opens his candy drawer and pulls out a leftover pair from one of his late nights in the office. “Obviously I liked _SpaceGodzilla_.” The smile he sends across the desk is probably a little goofy, but he’s gobsmacked by just how bad he’s into Iwaizumi after only an hour of his company.

Iwaizumi’s smile as he takes the new chopsticks is definitely goofy, even after Tooru mentioned the abduction and accidentally let out what Hanamaki calls his cat-sex screech and dropped a piece of eggplant on his favorite nebula-print tie. That should count for something.

Hanamaki eventually returns from the cafeteria, only to stop in the middle of the department and make an exaggerated look of betrayal at Tooru, lifting up their bentos pointedly. Tooru beams at him as he uses his cane to shut his office door.

For the first time since he was hired, Tooru goes an entire lunch hour without touching his work. Instead he extracts intel on Matsukawa to use later in Hanamaki’s tsundere favor, and snorts water at Iwaizumi’s retelling of a student’s attempt to use a pick-up line on Kyoutani, his anatomy TA, and makes Iwaizumi guffaw with his impression of Irihata-san. It’s the most productive he’s been in a while, he thinks.

“How did you end up with anatomy?” Tooru asks when they’ve calmed down.

Iwaizumi sobers. “I was a grader for an anatomy course in undergrad,” he says. “The cash was good and it helped me while I changed my major to kinesiology. Med already had an exercise scientist but bio needed professors, so I came over.”

Tooru clears away their trash and pulls out his sweets stash. “What was your first major?”

“Journalism,” Iwaizumi admits, accepting some bubble candy. Tooru makes a noise of surprise. “The university was known for its program and they offered me a sports scholarship, so it seemed like the right thing to do.”

Tooru has a lot of questions— _what kind of journalism, what sport_ —but Iwaizumi is a little subdued in a way reminiscent of him with his knee. “Why did you switch?” he asks without pressure.

“Change in perspective,” Iwaizumi says after a pause. He looks like he’s struggling to find something to follow that, so Tooru puts him out of his misery.

“Let me guess—alien abduction?” he days knowingly. It’s his first time joking about it since that night. “Believe me—that’ll change your perspective.”

Iwaizumi’s boyish grin returns. “Shockingly, no. Guess I wasn’t good enough to probe.”

“I wonder why.” Tooru gives him an unhurried once-over. “Seems like you’ve got the brains...definitely the brawn...” He puts on his most innocent look. “My condolences on your unprobeable face.”

Iwaizumi chuckles. “You're kind of shitty,” he says, propping his chin in his hand and squinting at Tooru through his smile. Tooru can’t even pretend to take offense, since Iwaizumi looks just as moonstruck as he feels. “It’s your fault—should’ve left some beauty for the rest of us.”

It’s the corniest compliment anyone has ever paid Tooru, but it’s also the most devastating—it hits his brain like a photon torpedo and obliterates the rest of his thoughts. He wastes a few seconds stammering through an attempt at a retort before giving up and hiding his face behind his hands. When he peeks through his fingers, he finds Iwaizumi blushing but smug.

“It’s almost time for my class,” he tells Tooru after a glance at his Gallifreyan clock, seeming surprised at the passage of time. “I should go prep.” He stands up and hooks his thumbs in his pockets. He nods at Tooru’s leg. “How are you feeling?”

Tooru thinks about it. The throbbing from this morning has mostly relented, but that's probably the endorphins swirling in his system from what might have been his first date in a year. “Perfect,” he says, holding up an OK. “I told you the cure was lunch.”

“If that’s the case,” Iwaizumi suggests, opening the door, “then maybe I’ll drop by again.”

Tooru is going to perform the most intense fist pump of his life the moment Iwaizumi’s back is turned. “For my health, of course.”

“Of course.” Iwaizumi’s smirk is so handsome Tooru wants to bite it. “I’m a doctor after all.”

“Kinesiologist,” Tooru quips. Since tomorrow is the weekend, he tries, “Why don’t you come by for a checkup on Monday?”

Iwaizumi was right—it really is unmistakable when he makes mooneyes at him. “Next lunch is on you then,” he says, backing out of the office. Tooru notices that he doesn’t turn around until the last second. “Until Monday, Oikawa-sensei.”

“Until Monday.” Tooru waits until Iwaizumi leaves the department with a wave to Hanamaki before leaping onto his good leg and letting out a primal yell. “ _Yes_!”

Hanamaki appears in the doorway. “Violation of the bro-code aside, I’m actually impressed right now.”

Tooru lets out another yell. Then he claps his hands together in front of his face. “Makki, I’m sorry for ditching you. Thank you for graciously allowing me the opportunity to ogle my future moon colony mate.”

“I’ll let it pass this time,” Hanamaki says. “I gave your lunch away to some unfortunate, but next time I expect reimbursement.” His ears pinken just enough for Tooru to guess who got his food, but before he can interrogate further Hanamaki continues, “Wow. What a catch.”

Tooru practically vibrates. “I know—”

“He wasn’t put off by your crappy movie taste, your excruciating personality, _or_ your cat-sex screech. He’s a keeper.”

“I _know_ ,” Tooru says. He rubs his hands through his hair. “All I have to do is not screw this up.” He massages the side of his thigh above his bad knee.

Hanamaki’s leer softens into a small smile. “Judging by the look on his face when he left, I don’t think you will.”

He returns to his desk while Tooru internally combusts, excitement bursting inside him like a nova. Not even having to hobble back to his seat puts a damper on his glow. It’s a long time before he cools down enough to start working on the draft of his next paper.

By the time he has to leave for class, he’s only managed to add comments to one page. His lecture is excellent, however, and he even leaves campus at a reasonable hour. He rewards himself with an episode of _Planetes_ while he washes up for bed. 

He falls asleep on top of his laptop in the middle of searching how to cut bento food into the shape of stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No cynical, hard-to-get iwaoi dynamic - we go straight to awkward, flirtatious snarking like men.


	2. Doubt Thou The Sun Doth Move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A decaying binary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the unintentional hiatus!

On Monday morning Tooru arrives at the phys sci office while Venus is still rising, juggling problem sets, equipment for a soil experiment, his portable solar telescope, and the bentos he woke up early to assemble. 

They’re tied in hedgehog-print furoshiki, the only wrapping he could find in his half-unpacked apartment. Inside are salmon cakes with planetary rings of grated carrots and snow peas, sweet pumpkin cut into stars, and rice under seaweed shaved into the shape of rockets. It’s clumsy work, but Tooru is proud of the theme he spent the weekend perfecting.

The sheer volume of space that Iwaizumi occupied in his mind over the last two days is embarrassing. Tooru even had a dream about that night in the field, of falling at earth and through endless cloud layers and into the throat of the void, and he’d still woken in a good mood, buoyed by the simple memory of lunch. He could hardly wait for the dawn this morning, even though he loves the dark.

Hanamaki has only just started turning on the department lights when Tooru walks in, this time in just his rehab insoles.

“Oikawa-sensei,” he greets sleepily, blowing into his hands. He must be out of it today, because he doesn’t follow it up with any wry observations of Tooru’s obvious enthusiasm.

Tooru has suspected since his second week here that Hanamaki doesn’t sleep well. He takes pity on him. 

“Wild weekend, Makki?” he tsks. “You’re too old to be partying like that.” Not waiting for Matsukawa, he turns around so Hanamaki can take the thermos from its pocket on his bag.

“If I’m old, what does that make you?” Hanamaki yawns, carrying the thermos with both hands to his desk and pouring two cups.

“Your wise and benevolent elder,” Tooru says sagely.

“Thank you, Grand King,” Hanamaki deadpans. Tooru reminds himself to ask about the nickname later.

He helps Hanamaki flick on the rest of the lights and reboot the department computers before hauling his things to his office and giving his knee a quick massage. He’s been more careful with it since Friday, eager to make today’s lunch go just as well as the last. He keeps his leg properly elevated and iced while he turns on his laptop and starts hate-reading the paper that Udai-san sent him over the weekend.

Someone else had beaten them to the punch on their project, publishing just days ahead of Udai-san’s deadline. Tooru had sliced right through a seaweed sheet when the email came through during his fifth attempt at the bentos. It’s a disappointing setback, but he’s determined to salvage their project by coming up with a new angle for their data. Once he has his eureka moment, it’s over for Futakuchi and his silent giant of a programmer.

Yahaba knocks on his door after an hour and a half of brainstorming. The sight of his tidy coiffed hair reminds Tooru to unclench his jaw.

“Shigeru-chan,” he greets. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“I already agreed to help you, Oikawa-senpai,” Yahaba reminds him, but he seems pleased.

Tooru pulls a second chair up to his side of the desk and tucks his leg away so they can crowd around his laptop. Together he and Yahaba draft a newsletter for the astronomy club, which Tooru will send out to his brand new mailing list ahead of the club’s first meeting at the beginning of next semester. Yahaba does most of the copy while Tooru crops in astrophotography and pictures of club equipment. Watching the letter come together makes Tooru feel like he’s finally on the way to rebuilding what he had before.

His eagerness is so infectious that by the time they’re done Yahaba stops respectfully complaining about his humming and starts tapping his feet along in a rhythm that demonstrates why he was hired to teach standing waves right out of his master’s degree.

They finish an hour before lunch. Tooru can’t work anymore—his stomach is rumbling with more than just hunger by the time he slides his laptop across the desk and gives Yahaba full rein of his dessert drawer.

“You’re a saint, Shigeru-chan,” Tooru says, partly because it’s laughably untrue (Yahaba got busted in his first semester for running a beetle-wrestling ring with samples from Tanaka-sensei’s lab, and only kept his job because she thought it was funny and made him co-author a paper on the results) but mostly because he knows Yahaba is busy applying to doctorate programs. “You’ve been an incredible help.”

Yahaba looks flattered. “My pleasure, senpai. I happen to have milk bread in my office today, if you’d like.”

Tooru’s smile sharpens. He’s not sure how Yahaba dug up that nugget of extremely dangerous information on him, but he knows he wants something.

“How can I help you?” he says sweetly.

Respectably, Yahaba doesn’t wilt at his tone. “I heard you’re close with Iwaizumi-sensei.”

That’s not what Tooru was expecting. For some reason pleasure swells like in his chest like a red giant. “Oh, I...” he says uselessly.

“I thought you might know his TA, in that case.”

Tooru feels like an antenna picking up a burst of deep-space noise. It’s literally his _job_ to analyze signals, so he rubs his hands together and gossips, “You know each other?”

“In passing,” Yahaba demures. 

“Well!” Tooru says. “I’m certainly acquainted with Iwaizumi-sensei, but I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Kyoutani-kun—”

“Yeah?”

The raspy voice from the office door makes both of them jump. Standing at the threshold is a man growing out a bad dye job, holding a box of rehabilitation bands. Yahaba quickly finds a nonchalant expression, but he ruins it by turning bright pink.

“Speak of the devil!” Tooru exclaims.

Kyoutani is exactly how Iwaizumi described him: pouty, prickly, and underneath it all a little puppy-like. Tooru doesn’t miss the way he darts a look at Yahaba under very dark lashes before turning his brooding stare on Tooru’s planets and posters.

“You’re Oikawa?”

Loyal to a fault, Yahaba tenses, but Tooru has already heard how Kyoutani often straddles the line between blunt and rude—apparently he had to interview three times for this position, his considerable résumé just barely longer than his list of social faults.

“The one and only.” Tooru spreads his hands grandly.

Kyoutani scowls. “Iwaizumi sent me.”

“As a TA, shouldn’t you show a little respect?” Yahaba interjects. His boy-next-door face always makes his hot temper a surprise.

Kyoutani flexes, crushing the cardboard box between his arms, all but growling back.

On any other day Tooru would gleefully observe, but a sinking feeling in his stomach distracts him from his usual desire to gather data. “Play nice,” he says airily, with enough subtle menace that both of them go silent. “Why did Iwaizumi-sensei send you, Kyoutani-kun?”

“Got dragged into a physical therapy demo on the lawns,” Kyoutani explains, still cutting eyes at Yahaba. “Says he can’t make lunch.”

Tooru hates having his suspicions confirmed. He hated it when the unnatural, fractal light glowing through his old bedroom window in the middle of the night turned out to be _exactly_ what he thought it was, and he hates it now.

“Who the hell are you, anyway?” Kyoutani snaps over Tooru’s shoulder. Yahaba draws in a breath to snap back, but Tooru doesn’t hear them.

_Can’t make lunch_. It sounds like the excuses that Tooru’s old colleagues started offering after his discharge from the hospital, when he came back to work in the brace. Tendou of all people had taken him aside one day and told him that he ought to know the rest of the astronomers in the department talked about him whenever he left the office to refreeze his ice pack. Tooru spent most of the time until he left that job in the labs after that. 

He thought Iwaizumi might have had the same kind of giddy, tentative fun on Friday that Tooru had, that he’d also been struck by how easy their banter was and how synchronous their orbit. But maybe he’d really spent the whole time waiting for an opportune moment to get away. 

Maybe the blasé way he took Tooru’s story about his knee was forced. Maybe he realized that Tooru wasn’t joking. Maybe he’d been faking the mooneyes the whole time.

Tooru realizes that Yahaba and Kyoutani are still arguing. The cardboard box has been tossed aside and they’re standing toe to toe. Across the lobby Hanamaki is leaning back in his chair to watch with interest.

“Boys,” Tooru says, smiling very wide. “Please take your mating ritual somewhere else.” Both of them spring apart. “Kyoutani-kun, a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for the message.”

Kyoutani growls something unintelligible, scoops up his box, and stomps off. Yahaba quite unmistakably stares after him. Hanamaki smothers a laugh and turns back to his game of solitaire.

“Thank you for your hard work, Shigeru-chan,” Tooru says, standing up, ignoring the sudden ache in his knee. “I’ll count introducing you to Kyoutani-kun as returning the favor.”

Nearly coming to fists should have poured water on the spark of Yahaba’s interest, but his face is still pink and he nods vigorously. Somehow it isn’t so shocking that he seems quite pleased about how that introduction went.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Tooru says, gathering up his telescope and tripod, “I think I’ll eat on the roof today.”

He leaves Yahaba and Hanamaki in the department, not bothering with his office door, stopping only to grab the bentos before jogging down the phys sci hallway to the stairwell. His face feels strangely hot and tight as he climbs the stairs two at a time, and he only realizes that it’s piping red humiliation when he steps onto the roof and feels the sharp autumn wind rake across his skin.

He hasn’t been this disappointed and embarrassed since his ex-girlfriend came to his hospital room after his first knee surgery to break up with him, warning that if he didn’t redact his story then she would take her parents suggestion and find a real doctor. She hadn’t even waited for his nurse to leave the room.

The weather is getting colder. Tooru wishes he’d brought his sweater, and also that he’d taken the stairs a little slower. His knee hurts.

He sets up his tripod and angles his little H-alpha for a good view of the sun. Sometimes, when he needs to think, he likes to look at solar prominences and granulation; there is something comforting about the warm cast of this particular hydrogen wavelength. He thought he might share the view today, but maybe the stars aren’t aligned after all.

After several silent minutes staring at the sun, chasing sunspots and analyzing surface detail along the solar limb, Tooru feels a little bit better. When the worst of his mood is past, he sighs and takes a seat on the chilly ground, pulling the bentos into his lap.

He knows he’s being ridiculous. Plans fall through all the time. This is nothing like being dumped in front of the very same hospital staff that helped him hobble to the toilet. There’s no reason to feel humiliated when all Kyoutani said was that Iwaizumi needed a raincheck. It’s not like he’d told Tooru in front of Yahaba and Hanamaki that Iwaizumi was rescinding his offer of company because he thought Tooru was a conspiracist freak.

The disappointment is still there, though.

Tooru opens one of the bentos. All of the meticulous effort is still intact. He’s not sure if Iwaizumi would have been impressed or if he would have been mocking, but he’d been looking forward to his reaction either way.

Now he has more food to himself than he expected. Fortunately he’s very accomplished at eating his feelings—he can probably finish both bentos while he mopes and telescopes before he has to go back to preparing tonight’s lecture.

Right as he breaks his chopsticks, the door to the roof bursts open.

Tooru nearly sends the food over the side of the building in surprise. Iwaizumi stands at the threshold, breathing hard, damp with sweat along the collar of his button-down. Tooru blinks owlishly at him, his shock eclipsed by a bright, buoyant relief.

“Sorry I’m late,” Iwaizumi pants.

Tooru’s disappointment burns up like a helium flash, converting straight to the same giddy excitement from last week. He can feel his face lighting up at the sight of Iwaizumi and there’s nothing he can do about it, no way to hide it when it’s just him on the roof surrounded by his obvious effort and enthusiasm.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Tooru says, strangely breathless even though he’s not the one who ran here from the lawns, by the looks of it.

Iwaizumi scowls a little bit as he takes a seat on the other side of the bentos. “Me too. I was helping Asahi-san with a demo. He’s one of the best PTs I’ve ever seen, but he gets so nervous it’s painful to watch.” He shrugs. “I thought he’d need help through lunch, but Sawamura-san and Sugawara-san showed up to rescue him.” He’s only a little red as he adds, “I came straight here.”

“You must have worked up an appetite,” Tooru says, embarrassingly upbeat considering how embarrassingly upset he was just moments ago.

Iwaizumi smirks. “What’s on the menu?”

Tooru tips the open bento toward him and watches his face closely for his judgement. At first Iwaizumi’s eyes go wide with surprise—then he bites the inside of his cheek in a way that makes it obvious that he thinks Tooru’s handiwork is cute and doesn’t want to say it.

“Wow,” he offers, grabbing the other bento for himself. “Didn’t think you could actually cook.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tooru narrows his eyes, but Iwaizumi is already taking one of the too-many pairs of chopsticks Tooru grabbed on his rush out of the office and trying some of the salmon.

“Ah,” he says, feigning surprise. “It’s edible.” He asks over Tooru’s noise of outrage, “What’s in this?”

“Peas and carrots!” Tooru huffs. “I’ll take it back if you’re going to be rude...!”

Iwaizumi tucks his bento into his lap protectively. Despite the outside chill Tooru feels warm watching him dig into his food, pausing every so often to admire Tooru’s handiwork. All the food he wasted this weekend suddenly seems worth it.

A thought occurs to him. “How did you know I was up here?”

“Yahaba-sensei,” Iwaizumi says around a bite. “He gave me this too.” From behind his back he pulls out a bag of milk bread.

Tooru closes his eyes and apologizes to the universe for doubting its omniscient benevolence. Then he opens them and gives Iwaizumi his biggest smile. “Thanks for the food,” he says.

“Thanks for the food,” Iwaizumi echoes belatedly, his mouth full. Toooru snickers at him and digs in too.

Iwaizumi grills him about his knee between bites of stars. “How’s the swelling? You took it easy this weekend, right?”

“Yes, mother,” Tooru sighs. It’s true—he used his cane to get around even when it felt like overkill and did the gentle exercises he learned after his surgery.

“Don’t be a jackass,” Iwaizumi warns him. His tone is dangerous, but he has a little bit of pumpkin on his mouth.

Tooru gives him a sparkling smile. “I’m always a jackass.”

“So I see.” Iwaizumi blocks Tooru’s attempt to steal his rice rocket. “No abductions?” Instead of sarcasm, he says it with concern.

“No abductions,” Tooru confirms, smiling a little. Iwaizumi is just carrying on their banter, but it sounds enough like he believes Tooru that pleasure curls around him like a circumstellar disk.

“Let’s keep it that way,” Iwaizumi says. It’s not exactly in his power but Tooru is going to obey just to keep that boyish satisfaction on Iwaizumi’s face. “How’s your paper coming along?”

Tooru groans. “It’s not.” He tells him how Moniwa-sensei’s protégés cut just ahead of them, gritting his teeth around his frustration at Aone’s annoyingly brilliant data analysis. Iwaizumi seems amused at Tooru’s snarking, but he listens dutifully. “Now I have to pull a miracle out of my ass.”

“Take your head out while you’re up there,” Iwaizumi advises, chuckling when Tooru squawks. 

“That’s it?” Tooru exclaims, tossing his chopsticks into his empty bento. “You’re not gonna offer any consolation? Not even a word of encouragement?”

Iwaizumi is enjoying this too much. “You wouldn’t be able to fit your ego through the door if I did.”

Tooru pulls out the big guns—he purses his lips in his best pout, looking at Iwaizumi through his lashes. He knows how he looks like this: a little ethereal, if the sun overhead is limning him in gold like he thinks it is.

Iwaizumi makes the same face he had when Tooru had shown him the bentos, giving him a quick flash of hope which is immediately smothered by Iwaizumi pointing out, “You’ll get wrinkles like that.”

Tooru can feel a vein rising even as laughter bubbles in his throat. “You would know,” he coos.

Iwaizumi throws rice at him. He isn’t quick enough to dodge Tooru’s rat-tail whip with one of the rolled up furoshiki.

“Okay, okay,” he surrenders with a chuckle, rubbing his arm. “How’s this: you’re brilliant, Oikawa-sensei, and you’ll think of something.”

Pleasure radiates through Tooru like ultraviolet through a dust cloud, ionizing him; he can feel the gratification shining on his face. For some reason Iwaizumi’s flattery hits him the hardest, makes him glow the brightest.

“Was that so hard?” Tooru asks. He pats the place where he whipped Iwaizumi, trying not to shiver at the strength in the muscle under his palm. “I won’t let you down, Iwaizumi-sensei.”

Iwaizumi flexes under Tooru’s hand, seeming caught off guard. Tooru nearly takes his hand away, but Iwaizumi meets his eyes and says, “Haven’t so far.”

Blood rushes to Tooru’s face. He’s unbalanced by just that, flustered in the way he’s used to flustering other men and women. A second later Iwaizumi flushes too, finally self-conscious. 

Gesturing at the setup on the roof, he quickly switches tack. “What’s all this anyway?”

Tooru takes the segue with both disappointment and relief, the former at having to take his hand off of Iwaizumi’s strong arm and the latter at the opportunity to show Iwaizumi the H-alpha like he planned. They put the bentos aside so they can admire the view through the telescope.

“It’s red,” Iwaizumi says with surprise when he leans down to the eyepiece. “And…angry.”

Tooru laughs, delighted. Iwaizumi sounds as curious as his students—it makes him feel as proud as it does in the classroom. “This telescope has an H-alpha filter,” he explains. “That means it’s looking in just one part of the radiation spectrum.”

Iwaizumi squints his other eye closed for a better view. “Why?”

“To see features of the sun that other types of light don’t show.” Tooru remembers his first look at a flare through this filter. He watched ribbons of gas billow up from the furred face of the sun, brighter than anything else in the telescope, and awe had made his throat oddly tight at the sight. “Prominences, spicules, fibrils—those kinds of things.”

“Of course,” Iwaizumi says drily, pulling back to give Tooru an equally dry stare. “All of those.”

Tooru chuckles. “H-alpha light is given off by hydrogen atoms,” he explains, and goes on to describe a little bit about quantum behavior. He has given this exact lecture tens of times before, but Iwaizumi’s attention and little noises of fascination make his belly melt with the rising heat of his passion. He ends up walking Iwaizumi through the discovery of particle-wave duality, pacing through the historical debate right there on the roof. It’s only when Iwaizumi erupts with laughter at his Einstein impression that he realizes he’s been babbling.

“Ah,” he chuckles, rubbing the back of his hot neck. “I got carried away.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t look too put out, just a little fond. “You’re a good teacher.”

Tooru doesn’t know how much more sweet talking he can endure from Iwaizumi, whose cheeky insults even give him a bad case of butterflies. “Tell me about the demo,” he blurts, casting around for something else to focus on other than how handsome Iwaizumi looks leaning on the roof with Tooru’s telescope between his legs.

Iwaizumi’s smile goes a little crooked. “You asking for that anatomy lesson?” His eyes are a little dark as he looks at Tooru, even in the sunshine.

Tooru has to remind himself that they’re on the roof of his place of employment. “Yes, sensei,” he jokes. He still can’t stop himself from looking back at Iwaizumi from under his lashes, his eyes probably just as dark.

For a moment Iwaizumi just swallows. His gaze flicks to Tooru’s mouth so fast that Tooru wonders if he imagined it, before he clears his throat.

He launches into his own description of exercises he and Asahi-san demonstrated to passing students on the lawns. Tooru can only just follow the explanations of common musculature and chiropractic problems among students, but he likes the way Iwaizumi subconsciously flexes as he talks. When he mentions the flock of students that came up to ask about kinesiology majors afterward, Tooru snorts.

“They just wanted to get a closer look,” he says knowingly. At Iwaizumi’s raised eyebrow, he gestures at Iwaizumi in general. “At all this anatomy.”

Iwaizumi flicks at Tooru’s rude pointing hand. “So the students think I’m probeable?”

“Not just the students,” Tooru chirps before he can help it.

He and Iwaizumi both immediately go bright red. For several heartbeats the susurrus of the autumn wind is the only sound that scrapes across the roof. Tooru prepares to launch himself off the roof.

Eventually Iwaizumi smacks a hand to his forehead. “This is why E.T. threw you back—you’re a shitty flirt!”

Tooru is stunned. He expected Iwaizumi to kick the bentos at him and stomp off, or maybe fling his telescope to the ground on his way down from the roof—both have happened before.

Once the insult registers, however, he stomps his good leg. “I’m a fantastic flirt! The best flirt they could have abducted!”

“The results say otherwise!” Iwaizumi stares pointedly at his knee.

It’s so rude and insensitive, so indifferent to the angst that’s been needling Tooru under the kneecap since that fateful night, that he bursts into laughter. It’s his ugliest laugh, the one where his nose wrinkles and he snorts a little, but it makes Iwaizumi crack another smile.

“But I made you blush,” Tooru wheezes. 

Iwaizumi scoffs. “From secondhand embarrassment.”

Tooru feels both exhilarated and also like he could die. “Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“I usually do.” Iwaizumi isn’t fast enough to dodge the furoshiki whip this time either.

“Please don’t throw me down from here,” Tooru says, his face still sun-hot. “I only have one knee left.”

Iwaizumi pretends to think about it. “Fine.” He looks at Tooru with dark eyes again. “It’d be a waste of a pretty face.”

The blush that Tooru just battled down immediately leaps back to his cheeks. A nova bursts between his ribs, the same incredible brightness from last week, powerful enough to literally knocks him over. He flops back against the roof, throwing his arms across his face.

“How is that line any better than mine?” he groans.

Iwaizumi pulls him up with one strong hand. “Don’t lie there. You’ll catch a cold.”

“Yes, mother,” Tooru says, giving up on composure and letting Iwaizumi see his embarrassed delight.

“Jackass,” Iwaizumi mutters, mooneyed again.

Between the warm hand still holding his elbow and the half-lidded hazel attention on his face, Tooru melts a little more. He entertains the thought of staying up here indefinitely, eating star bentos and chasing sun spots with Iwaizumi and maybe experiencing that cute frowning smile pressed up against his own.

They spring apart after a glance at their watches reveals that they’ve been dallying too long.

“Time flies when you’re bored,” Iwaizumi comments as they race to clean the roof.

Tooru throws one of the extra pairs of chopsticks in his direction. “That’s not how that saying goes!”

Iwaizumi sweeps up the remnants of their lunch while Tooru puts away his telescope. They bump into each other as they work; Tooru can’t help the childish impulse to bump Iwaizumi harder. Iwaizumi returns the shove, and they end up tussling for half a minute until they truly can’t dawdle any longer.

It’s a bit of a mad dash back to the phys sci department. Tooru knows without looking that he’s rumpled from the wind on the roof and from Iwaizumi’s ruthless noogie, but he’s too buzzed from the sensation of Iwaizumi’s broad, warm palm sliding briefly through his hair to care. 

Not even the huge-eyed, incredulous look that Hanamaki shoots him when they cross the lobby to his office phases him; he passes the look right back, tilting his head at Matsukawa posting one arm on Hanamaki’s desk, leaning too close to be discussing their upcoming department parties. They share a mutual, wordless promise to joust later.

Inside Tooru’s office, Iwaizumi helps deposit the things from lunch on the desk. “Thanks to you, I have to run to my next class.”

Tooru winks. “I'm sure the students will appreciate—ow!” He cuts off when Iwaizumi leans across the desk to pinch him good-naturedly.

“Will you behave?” he huffs, glancing meaningfully at Tooru’s knee.

“No promises,” Tooru sings. Of course he will—he wants to see that frowning smile again.

One corner of Iwaizumi’s mouth is still lifted. “Guess I’ll have to make another check-up.”

Tooru can hardly believe his luck. Somehow he hasn’t screwed everything up yet—that’s more than he can say for past dates with people he hadn’t liked even a fraction as much as he likes Iwaizumi.

“Friday,” Tooru nods, hiding his nerves. “Your turn to bring lunch.”

Iwaizumi chuckles and shoves his hands in his pockets. He looks like he wants to linger, but they’re out of time. “Stay out of trouble, Oikawa-sensei.”

Tooru watches him leave, noticing how Matsukawa breaks away from Hanamaki’s desk and follows him out. He admires the broad, solid expanse of Iwaizumi’s back until it rounds the corner, and then he falls back in his seat, marveling at how much better lunch had gone than he had hoped.

Hanamaki comes to lean in his doorway. “Just what were you doing on school grounds, Oikawa-sensei?” He glances pointedly at Tooru’s mussed hair.

“Same thing you were doing on the clock, Makki,” Tooru retorts. His head is too high in the clouds for it to come out as anything but dreamy.

It works anyway—Hanamaki tries to cobble together a comeback, fails, and flees back to the lobby. Tooru watches him go with a smile, giddy for the both of them.

He feels energized, like he could power a star. Without thinking, he pulls his laptop over and throws it open, furiously typing the beginnings of an idea to Udai-san.

☆

Just as Tooru hoped, lunch becomes a habit.

He and Iwaizumi continue to meet on Mondays and Fridays. They take turns bringing the food—Tooru swallows his pride and patronizes a nearby conbini, and Iwaizumi shamelessly brings takeout and store bentos. The roof becomes their rendezvous point while the weather is still nice; Tooru starts keeping a blanket in his office to drag upstairs for their semiweekly picnics.

He shows Iwaizumi the sun in a few more filters, and then the faint shape of the moon in the daytime when the time of month is right. One time Iwaizumi drops off lunch leftovers right before Tooru’s night class and they catch the ISS passing overhead; Iwaizumi insists that it looks like a UFO, and threatens to headlock Tooru when he scoffs and calls him an amateur. Tooru even summons the courage to bring his astrophotography portfolio to lunch one week, and is so euphoric about Iwaizumi’s genuine compliments that he spends twenty flustered minutes explaining how the Crab Nebula would have looked like when it went off a thousand years ago. Iwaizumi lets him rant with that look from their first time on the roof in his eyes again.

When temperatures start dropping, they take lunch inside, alternating between their offices.

Tooru nearly has a fit the first time they eat in life sci: Iwaizumi’s office is all inspirational posters and muscle mannequins and shelves of exercise textbooks—except for a tiny Godzilla magnet hanging on the whiteboard he keeps. 

“Is that your _thing_?” Tooru asks, chuckling. Iwaizumi gives him an incredulous look before tugging pointedly at Tooru’s stellar lanyard, making him choke. 

Kyoutani walks in on one of their lunches while they’re debating whether the university provost wears a wig. His hackles raise at the sight of Tooru across Iwaizumi’s desk; clearly he has good instincts, because he goes from lap dog to mad dog before Tooru can even ask if he’s seen Yahaba around lately. Kyoutani just growls and leaves, and Tooru gets pinched when he sighs _ah, children_ at his back.

He and Iwaizumi go back to the souzaiya a few times. The staff seem wary of them, possibly because they keep arguing at volume about which alien anatomy is more probable—Iwaizumi insists that Predators are the pinnacle of biology and seems to enjoy the way Tooru heatedly objects that intelligence is not a goal of evolution. 

After these scathing exchanges, Iwaizumi usually restores the peace by buying Tooru a loaf of milk bread from a bakery close to campus. The first time, Tooru had been very touched that he remembered—until Iwaizumi snorted and said that he keeps track of all of Tooru’s weaknesses. 

If that’s the case, Iwaizumi must have noticed that he’s rapidly becoming one.

Whatever is waxing between them is doing so very strongly, albeit slowly. Even after weeks of lunches Tooru can’t describe it except in terms of some decaying binary, two stars gradually closing the distance between them. It’s inevitable that they’re going to collide—but not soon enough, Tooru thinks.

He tries to follow Iwaizumi’s pace, since in the past he has been guilty of going too fast. He likes results and conclusions, and sometimes surges through the effort and methodology it takes to get there. He has a bad habit of neglecting to savor simple attraction without rushing ahead to take a sample. Letting the lunches with Iwaizumi evolve on their own is an enormous exercise in patience, on par with waiting for a big simulation to run. Fortunately Tooru is used to studying things that move slowly.

It helps that every new discovery he makes about Iwaizumi is its own paradigm shift:

He really likes Godzilla. He doesn’t drink anything caffeinated or sugared. He puts his hands in his pockets when he’s feeling bashful. He’s a hardass about health and wellness but lackadaisical about things like his lecture notes and email correspondence. He has a stress ball on his desk in the shape of a volleyball. He’s popular with his kouhai, and an incredible mentor. His green eyes are from his mother, who emigrated from Peru shortly after meeting his father on a visit to extended family. He flicks the tiny Earth in the orrery in Tooru’s office whenever he stops by.

Tooru has never fallen so far so fast, not counting the night of his abduction. He doesn’t think he’ll mind this crash-landing.

A month out from the winter holiday, he enters life sci determined to confess—to properly ask Iwaizumi out. Any one of their lunches could be called a date, but they’ve never referred to them as anything other than _check-ups_. Tooru doesn’t mind if Iwaizumi doesn’t want to do more than snark at each other over store-bought meals for the rest of the semester, but he wants to know for sure that he’s not the only one falling deeper into this well of attraction.

Matsukawa is already holding his mail when he walks into the department. “Last box,” he announces with exaggerated relief. “System’s almost fixed.”

Tooru feels bittersweet. At first he had resented having to walk all the way to life sci every week, especially on his knee, but Matsukawa had played as big a part in making Tooru feel welcome at this university as Hanamaki had. Now it feels like the end of an era.

He winks. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“A man can dream,” Matsukawa says with a sigh, smiling when Tooru gasps. “I’m hardly the one you’ve been making excuses to visit anyway.”

Tooru doesn’t have the decency to blush. “And where is life sci’s prime specimen right now?” 

Matsukawa looks at him, unimpressed. “He’ll be back from class soon.”

Tooru feels a tingle of nerves in his belly. “Speaking of making excuses to visit,” he says perkily, setting aside his box so he can distract himself by tugging Matsukawa’s tie, “when are you and Mission Control going to elope?”

“I don’t know,” Matsukawa hums. “Maybe in a million years, right after you and Iwaizumi-sensei admit that you’ve been flirting this whole time.”

Tooru splutters, caught off guard. “Makki is a bad influence on you!”

“He’s been rubbing off on me,” Matsukawa agrees with a straight face, which breaks down when Tooru gags. “You’re just jealous.”

“ _Obviously_ ,” Tooru says. He steels his resolve and clenches a fist. “But that changes today.”

“Good luck, E.T.” Matsukawa sounds like he means it. 

The creak of the department door makes Tooru’s stomach leap and then drop. Now is the moment of truth—the moment when he determines if Iwaizumi likes him back, busted knee and alien abduction and all. He spins around with his best smile, but it’s not Iwaizumi who walks in.

It’s Ushijima. 

The sight of him hits Tooru like the ground rushing up at him at terminal speed. All at once memories attack him in a barrage of photon fire: the cold nights in the hospital, the vulnerable first few days back at work in the wheelchair, the painful walks down to the old laboratory with his cane, the whispers of his colleagues, the lonely decision made in his empty office to resign.

All the things that Tooru came here specifically to escape.

“Oikawa,” Ushijima greets. He looks exactly as he had when Tooru left his last university: as tall and broad as a star athlete, as if he played for some national team instead of spending all his time in front of a 3D printer.

The smile curdles on Tooru’s face. He doesn’t know what ugly expression is left in its wake, but it’s enough to make Matsukawa take a step back.

“Ushiwaka,” Tooru grits out.

Ushijima barely reacts to the sight of his teeth. “The university website listed your department as physical sciences, but the mail courier directed me here.”

How ironic. Tooru would laugh if his mood weren’t falling faster than a meteorite. “How can I help you?” he asks, his tone hideous.

“I’ve been invited to table at your university’s upcoming academics and career fair,” Ushijima explains. “I want your help.”

Tooru has to wrestle down his immediate refusal. It’s not that he’s against working with Ushijima on principle—well, actually. His first, second, and third impulses are, in fact, to turn him down. He already knows what Ushijima considers _help._

“The table will showcase both astronautics and astrophysics,” Ushjima insists after a long minute of tense silence. “Your expertise is necessary.”

“It wasn’t necessary in your grant request,” Tooru accuses. Even after all the numbers that Tooru had crunched for him, all the assembly he had assisted with, all the advising he had done, he hadn’t been _necessary_ enough to be written into the funding. An apology wouldn’t have gone very far with him, but it certainly would have dressed the wound of the insult enough to prevent it from festering into what he feels now.

Ushijima just gives him a long blink. After all this time, he still doesn’t understand the insult of his past snub, of his presence now. Tooru doesn’t know what he expected. 

He rubs the bridge of his nose, attempting to stave off a headache. “Why didn’t they ask Watari-sensei?”

Watari is their resident rocket scientist, after all. Tooru knew there would be a showcase for the astrophysics major during the fair, and had assumed Watari would be the one to ask him to table together.

“Watari-sensei’s team hasn’t yet won any funding or awards,” Ushijima says, with an utter lack of conceit. “Mine has.”

Tooru tries to calm down. Being around Ushijima always stokes his temper, like a runaway reaction in a star. He wishes he could tell Ushijima in no uncertain terms where he can shove his funding and awards, but he never crosses his pettiness with his passion.

He always attends resource fairs. Too many people with their eyes on the stars shove their heads down toward safer studies. Tooru would never miss a chance to show an astronomer-at-heart the opportunities in the field. Outreach trumps outrage every time.

“Half the table,” Tooru demands, certain that the glare on his face makes him look beastly. “Astrophysics is a major here. You can’t treat it like a concentration.”

“Fine.” Ushijima nods. “I’ll be in contact to discuss further arrangements. Goodbye, Oikawa.”

He leaves without any fanfare, ducking through the door and accidentally checking shoulders on his way out with Iwaizumi on his way in. They pause to apologize to one another, during which time Tooru tries frantically to smooth the knot of fury out of his face. He isn’t fast enough.

“Matsukawa-san,” Iwaizumi greets as the door closes behind him. “Oikawa—” He stops short.

Matsukawa comes up behind Tooru and puts a hand on his shoulder. “You okay, Major Tom?”

“Yes,” Tooru grits out unconvincingly. 

He wishes he could beam himself straight back to his office. He didn’t want Iwaizumi to see this side of himself. He tries to summon a smile, but Iwaizumi just replaces Matsukawa’s hand with his own, hauling Tooru out of the lobby and into his office.

“What’s your problem?” he asks, dropping Tooru into the seat across his desk. His manner is gruff but clearly concerned.

“Nothing,” Tooru tries.

Iwaizumi glowers harder.

Tooru scrubs his hands across his face, pushing the angry heat in his cheeks back down below his skin. “I ran into someone I didn’t want to see. That’s all.”

“That professor just now?” Iwaizumi asks, referring to his brief exchange with Ushijima at the door. His eyebrows slant down. “Who is he to you?”

Tooru is quiet for a while. There’s no simple way to describe his relationship with Ushijima, not when he’s been both his bitterest rival and, for a brief period of time, his only support. Trying to explain that dichotomy makes Tooru feel he did when he admitted to the abduction; the freefall of vulnerability is a lot like freefall toward cold, hard ground.

Iwaizumi waits while Tooru thinks; his arms are crossed and his face is stern, but not with impatience. He seems like a rock, like he could wait for Tooru forever. His steady silence eventually encourages Tooru to speak.

“I hate him,” he announces. Iwaizumi’s eyes widen, so he walks it back. “Mostly. I worked with him before I came here.”

“He’s your colleague?” Iwaizumi asks. For some reason he sounds a little less sour.

“Ushijima Wakatoshi. He’s the chair of the physics and engineering department at my old university,” Tooru says. scowling. “He was a boy genius in the space robotics field—people have been throwing money and jobs thrown at him since he was a kid. Every grant application I submitted, he received. All the club funding I petitioned for, he won.” Tooru clenches his teeth to keep his face from twisting into something ugly again. “He even poached my students for one of his stupid rocket-design tournaments.”

“Sounds like an asshole,” Iwaizumi scoffs. 

“He is,” Tooru says immediately, and then realizes he’s being unfair. “He just doesn’t realize it. He can calculate Lagrange points in his head, but social cues don’t compute.”

“What did he want?” Iwaizumi asks, sour again.

“He was invited to table at our university’s fair,” Tooru sighs. “We’re presenting majors together.”

Iwaizumi elevates to glowering. “Shouldn’t you have told him to go to hell?”

“I wish I could,” Tooru whines. “But Ushiwaka is an good resource for the students—research experience on one of his teams and a recommendation from him could get them into any program they wanted. He’s an ass, but he cares about giving kids opportunities.”

What Tooru doesn’t admit is that he owes Ushijima. There are things Tooru still hasn’t repaid him for: driving him to and from work when he was using the wheelchair, covering a few classes during his therapy sessions, carrying him out of his lab when he tripped over the cord of a tracking telescope and was paralyzed by the pain in his knee.

Ushijima was the only one who didn’t ditch him after the abduction. That alone covers a multitude of wrongs.

Iwaizumi looks very grumpy. He snatches up his stress ball from his desk and squeezes it so hard it bulges through his strong fingers. “Well, you’re here now. You don’t have to take any of his shit.”

Tooru blinks. Iwaizumi isn’t looking at him, too focused on crushing the little foam volleyball in his palm. Something warm and scintillating coalesces in Tooru’s chest, like a nebula collapsing into a nursery of newborn stars.

“Aw, Iwa-chan,” he laughs. The diminutive comes naturally to his lips. “You do care.”

“ _Iwa-chan_ ,” Iwaizumi repeats incredulously, ignoring the rest. His hand relaxes and the volleyball slowly expands. “What are you, five?”

“It’s cute,” Tooru insists. _Like you_ , he thinks to himself. He doesn’t say it—the core of courage he’d gathered to ask Iwaizumi out properly has burned out. He’ll have to try again some other time.

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. “Real mature.” The smirk tugging at his stern mouth means that he doesn’t really hate it.

“Are you hungry, Iwa-chan?” Tooru teases. He can ask that much—they’ll always have lunch, whether he gets Iwaizumi’s side of the equation or not.

Iwaizumi takes a long look at him, maybe making sure that his smile is genuine, before he nods. “Starving,” he replies, holding out a hand across the desk.

Tooru grins, the last of his mood eclipsed by giddiness, and takes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I missed these dorks.

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to chat or leave a tip, I also exist at [t-pock.tumblr.com](https://t-pock.tumblr.com).


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